1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to educational and teaching devices and, more particularly, is directed towards a teaching aid which is especially designed to assist slow learning children in forming, pronouncing and spelling English words.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A child learning phonics and spelling needs to be able to distinguish between long, short and other vowel sounds, and to be able to recognize the three consonants that change from hard to soft in different contexts. Additionally, although not as readily achievable, a student should be able to recognize and distinguish between sounds which may be characterized as "breath" sounds and "voice" sounds.
The need for having an effective teaching aid in the above-noted areas is especially evident in teaching reading to bilingual, slow or retarded students. For example, most of these students have a great deal of trouble forming and pronouncing verbs in the past tense, as well as nouns in the plural form. In a word like "jumped", for example, they will strive to force an unnatural "d" sound by saying "jump-ted" or the like. It becomes necessary, therefore, to be able to convey to such students that, since the "p" in "jumped" is a "breath" sound, the only natural way to pronounce the past tense ending is to allow it to become a "t" sound. In contrast, in a word such as "fanned", it is natural to pronounce the "d" correctly since "n" is a "voice" sound like "d".
Such students have similar problems in learning phonics.
While there are many fine reading textbooks and teachers' manuals available which spell out the standard steps necessary to develop these skills in a normal student, none to my knowledge are capable of reaching the slow students, or are only partially effective with many average students. While bright and intelligent students are, in contrast, easily taught by any logical step-by-step approach, since their minds will make any necessary connections between steps and will recall what has already been taught, in order to teach slow and average students I have found that one needs to saturate the mind with many approaches and use whichever may be called for at any given time to bring about an understanding that the student is striving for (or even resisting).
Precious few teaching aids are directed towards the slow or average students, and it is towards this end that the present invention is advanced. I have found it to be particularly useful to have a teaching aid which permits the slow or average student to experience a variety of physical sensations, including sight, sound, and tactile, during this learning process.
Prior art United States patents in this general area of which I am aware include: Nos. 217,566; 293,731; 1,162,629; 3,654,712; 3,715,812; 3,813,471; and 4,007,548.